At asset management giants from Blackrock to Third Point, banks such as Goldman Sachs and Citigroup, and financial service behemoths Nasdaq, MetLife and American Express, upstart fintech firms are revolutionizing the way they operate. These blue-chip institutions are both users and investors in the most disruptive fintech firms on Wall Street, as laid out in Forbes’ 2019 Fintech 50.

Pioneering fintechs are allowing banks to make faster and better underwriting decisions, and to get a better handle on their risk. Armed with powerful new sets of data and machine-learning algorithms, banks and insurers are now able to sift through haystacks of information to quickly spot financial fraud, identity theft and those who are trying to evade sanctions. Many of these same tools can be used to confirm borrowers’ identities, easing the flow of credit to individual lenders and small business. In markets, algorithms that study language are helping trading houses and exchanges spot manipulation. Mega-banks are using AI to get a better, real-time understanding of their market and operational risks.

Our Fintech 50 list includes stalwarts on Wall Street like pioneering data startups such as Ayasdi, Digital Reasoning and Enigma. Secure communications platform Symphony now counts over 400,000 users who generally pay $15 a month to have access to its encrypted, Slack-like messaging platform and hundreds of other tools such as financial applications like FactSet and KoyFin, screen-sharing functions and even virtual data rooms to settle trades. IEX, another longtime listmaker, is now where billionaire Thomas Peterffy’s Interactive Brokers trades. Addepar, the software platform wealth managers use to manage their client accounts, surpassed $1 trillion in assets in April, and assets rose a further 30% by year-end.

New additions to our list include, Axoni, founded by blockchain entrepreneurs Greg Schvey and Jeff Schvey, which aims to use smart contracts to overhaul the back office of the world’s biggest derivative markets. Axoni is currently working with DTCC and some of the world’s biggest bank to build a distributed ledger to settle credit derivative trades and its technology is deployed in foreign exchange. Recently, it added Goldman to a who’s-who of Wall Street backers.

Fintech is birthing a number of entrepreneurs. Kyrgyzstan-born Erkin Adylov got his start on Wall Street as an equity analyst at Goldman and then as a portfolio manager at hedge fund GLG Partners, before deciding he could build an AI stack for financial firms, including language algorithms to track emails and voice communications, and firmwide inventories of financial assets to trade or sell. Behavox, his five-year-old fintech startup, already counts some of the world's biggest quant funds as users, and Adylov foresees building the company into the Microsoft Azure of sorts for AI on Wall Street.

You will increasingly see new lister Carta in initial public offering documents. The fintech helps private and public companies and their employees and investors track their ownership and is used by nearly 100 unicorns. The simple task of keeping track of equity grands, options and performance-based stock units and funding rounds was disorganized until Carta came along and began managing the capital tables of the world’s most valuable private companies. Named as a transfer agent in Tilray’s S-1, you should expect to see Carta’s name again if the likes of Slack and Casper go public.

The town of Fort Lee, New Jersey, is known to commuters as a feeder into the George Washington Bridge. It’s also home to a former community bank that now powers the online lending industry. Gilles Gade, the founder of Cross River Bank, assembled a group of investors to fix up a small bank after the crisis, then realized he could use its charter to originate loan notes for online lenders. Ever taken a loan from Affirm or Quicken’s RocketLoans? The actual loan note is issued by their bank-in-a-box at Cross River. Now that the secret’s out, Cross River recently took in $100 million in a round led by KKR that valued the former community bank at approximately $1 billion.

Here are the 11 companies serving Wall Street’s biggest firms that made the Forbes Fintech 50 in 2019, including a brief description of what they do, who their users are and how much they’re worth.

Its cloud-based software allows financial advisors, family offices and private banks to track and analyze a client’s holdings and more easily bring new clients on board. Integrates to Morningstar, Quovo, Citco, iCapital Network and Salesforce.

The company is using blockchain-based smart contracts to overhaul the back office of the world’s biggest derivative markets. Its distributed ledger will allow counterparties to see payments, calculations and other vital trade information in real time, improving efficiency and lowering risk. It's already partnering with world’s biggest banks and financial intermediaries.

Funding: $59 million from Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and others

Bona fides: It is currently putting the $10 trillion credit derivative market onto smart contracts working with DTCC and a steering committee of 15 of world's biggest banks. It’s already settling foreign exchange trades using the blockchain.

Its machine learning technology, first developed for defense agencies, is used by big banks to analyze their market and operational risks as well as to detect patterns of potential money laundering. Ayasdi helped Citigroup pass the Federal Reserve’s stress tests and by improving their analysis of assets is helping banks be more efficient with their capital reserves.

Cofounder & CEO: Henry Ward, 42, who launched the company in 2012 as eShares, with serial entrepreneur and investor Manu Kumar, 43.

Cross River Fort Lee, NJ

Born from a small New Jersey community bank, Cross River has used its FDIC-insured status to become the banker to the world’s most valuable fintechs. It creates the notes behind the loans firms like Quicken’s RocketLoans, Affirm and Best Egg dole out. Cross River also handles payments and deposits for the likes of Stripe, TransferWise, Visa and Coinbase, among others.

Founder & CEO: Gilles Gade, 52. Prior to founding Cross River in 2008, the French-born Gade was a technology investment banker and analyst and CFO of a mortgage company.

Nashville fintech Digital Reasoning.

From the company

Digital Reasoning Franklin, TN

Its machine-learning software can extract meaning from everyday communications and is used by top financial firms to screen employees' email and instant messages for misconduct and by Nasdaq to watch out for possible market manipulation.

Funding: $110 million Goldman Sachs, BNP, Nasdaq and others.

Bona fides: Critical to Nasdaq's SMARTS surveillance technology. Also used by Goldman, UBS and Point72.

Founder & President: Tim Estes, 39, who launched the company with the help of a professor while a senior at the University of Virginia, selling first to U.S. Army intelligence.

Funding: $130 million from New Enterprise Associates, Two Sigma Ventures, American Express and others. Latest valuation: An estimated $750 million.

Bona fides: Contracts can run into seven figures. Enigma is beginning to power MetLife’s underwriting decisions, and BlackRock’s marketing efforts.

Cofounders: CEO Hicham Oudghiri, 34, and Chairman Marc DaCosta, 34. The two studied philosophy together as Columbia undergraduates, with DaCosta later earning a Ph.D. in cultural anthropology.

iCapitalNetwork New York City, NY

Online platform iCapital Network allows high-net-worth individuals and their advisors to analyze and invest in private equity, private debt, venture capital and hedge funds with as little as $100,000 per fund, compared to the millions usually required for access to such investments. Pending acquisition of Bank of America’s alternative-investment feeder-fund business will add about $20 billion in client assets to iCapital’s existing $6 billion.

An average of 220 million shares are matched daily on this stock exchange, which was built in the wake of the 2010 “flash crash” to give long-term investors a level playing field against high-frequency traders. IEX is now taking stock listings, and in October billionaire Thomas Peterffy listed his Interactive Brokers on IEX.

Funding: $100 million from Franklin Templeton, Spark Capital and others.

Part Slack and part app store for Wall Street, the encrypted platform is where the biggest banks and investment firms communicate without compromising their data or breaching compliance rules. Users at competing firms message and share ideas, coders use it to collaborate on Github, and back-office staff can create data rooms to quickly fix trades. Customers have developed more than 500 automation bots using Symphony.

Funding: More than $300 million; latest valuation of $1 billion plus.

Bona fides: Used by more than 390 firms with more than 400,000 users; annual revenues are nearing $100 million.